Neptune's Strange Magnetic Field Stretches Arms in New Model (Video)

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Scientists knew Neptune's magnetic field was strange — just not
this strange.

Neptune, the eighth planet from the sun, has vivid blue clouds
and fierce windstorms, but also a
badly behaved magnetic field. The field is 27 times more
powerful than Earth's and sits at an angle on the planet,
changing chaotically as it interacts with the solar wind.

Researchers reconstructed the distant planet's magnetic field by
combining data gathered by NASA's Voyager 2 probe in 1989 with a
new model that was originally built to describe how plasma acts
in the lab. The new results paint a picture of a field
continuously in flux, tilted and bubbling out to one side,
researchers said. [‪Photos
of Neptune, The Mysterious Blue Planet ]

"You can't take a picture of the magnetosphere, the 'bubble' that
the planet's magnetic field carves in the solar wind, because
it's invisible to the naked eye — everything is derived from the
local measurements that the spacecraft made as it flew through,"
Jonathan Eastwood, a physicist and space scientist at Imperial
College London, told Space.com.

In the new model, "we see that the magnetosphere is quite
asymmetric, bulging out on one side," Eastwood added. "The old
cartoons were quite symmetric."

Eastwood's group, working with plasma physicists, used a
supercomputer to model the behavior of the superheated,
supercharged state of matter in Neptune's magnetosphere.
Specifically, they modeled how this matter interacts with ions
streaming from the sun and the planet's rotation to shape a
magnetic field. The magnetic interaction is particularly complex
because Neptune rotates on a tilted axis compared to the sun, and
the planet's magnetic field is tilted even more than this.

"Imagine taking the Earth, tipping it over diagonally, and then
moving its magnetic north pole to central Europe, and you start
to get a sense of what Neptune is like," Adam Masters, a
planetary scientist also from Imperial College London,
said in a statement. "The planet's unique magnetic field is
still very poorly understood, and our new modeling represents a
big leap forward."

As they push on, the researchers hope to examine how the
magnetosphere changes during different times of the Neptune year
and how it interacts with Neptune's largest moon, Triton.

Besides deciphering some of Neptune's puzzling data, the newly
adapted model could be useful in understanding what happens on
Earth as this planet's magnetic field interacts with the sun —
maybe even giving earlier warning of geomagnetic storms and their
effects on the surface.

"We started doing this modeling for the purposes of
space weather on Earth, so that's our overall, overarching
goal," Eastwood told Space.com. "These simulations could be
another tool that space-weather forecasters might be able to use,
complementing existing computer simulations that are currently
available."

The researchers are presenting their findings Wednesday (July 8)
at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting
2015 in Wales.